


A Rose Among Thorns

by 94BottlesOfSnapple



Series: Different in the Dark [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Developing Relationship, In Which Black Sky Means Cool Demonic Powers Instead Of Generic Kung Fu Skills, Multi, Not Actually Unrequited Love, POV Foggy Nelson, Pining, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-26 20:54:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30111900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/94BottlesOfSnapple/pseuds/94BottlesOfSnapple
Summary: Elektra Natchios is back in town, and for some reason that's Foggy's problem.He begins to see the person underneath Elektra's many masks - but for Foggy it really just means that whenever Elektra and Matt get back together, he'll have two people to be jealous of.
Relationships: Elektra Natchios/Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, Matt Murdock/Elektra Natchios/Franklin "Foggy" Nelson
Series: Different in the Dark [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2215818
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19





	A Rose Among Thorns

Foggy Nelson has never, ever, not even once, fantasized about kissing Elektra Natchios. In fact, he’s lowkey hated her for a majority of his adult life for reasons like: that super condescending way she speaks to him, breaking his best friend’s heart, and destroying his law firm. During the worst three months of his life, he also hated her for getting Matt killed.

Matt’s not actually dead, though, and their firm is back in business too — as much the proverbial phoenix as Matt himself — so Foggy doesn’t have very much to hold against Elektra these days, he supposes. Breaking Matt’s heart, still, maybe, but Matt’s also a grown ass adult who makes his own bad choices — and according to what he’s told Foggy about her, Elektra is basically his soulmate.

Ok, so potentially one of the reasons Foggy hates Elektra is heart-stoppingly intense jealousy over Matt. But it’s also why he would never think about kissing her, even if he didn’t have any other baggage about it and despite the fact that “hot, terrifying woman” is absolutely one of his types. She’s the love of Matt’s life, just as much as Matt is the love of his. He could never betray his best friend like that.

And yet, here he sits — cross-legged on his couch while rain hammers the windows, with Elektra’s ice-cold hands cupping his face and her mouth on his. He doesn’t really... Do anything, because his brain is a little bit broken by these facts. He had been pretty sure she’d always wanted to kiss him about as much as he wanted to kiss her: aka, not at all.

This kiss is way too enthusiastic for her to not even have considered it, though. She presses closer, licking into his mouth, and that’s the point that Foggy’s body gets the memo his brain has been trying to send it for the past two minutes and freaks the fuck out. He jerks backwards, flailing, and nearly topples over the arm of the couch; he’s caught by something cool and slick and semisolid from the back, and one of Elektra’s hands leaves his cheek to fist in the front of his shirt and haul him back upright.

She’s... A lot stronger than her size would suggest. Foggy maybe has some complicated Feelings about that and tries to ignore them.

“What,” he asks, when he’s able to marshal his thoughts back into a semblance of order, “the hell was that about?”

“I was curious,” she says, the same explanation she’d given for knocking at his window in the middle of a storm, and just as unsatisfying.

“Curiosity killed the cat, you know,” Foggy points out flatly, tired of her games.

“And satisfaction brought it back, Franklin,” comes the distracted reply.

Slowly, thoughtfully, Elektra’s cold, pale thumb strokes his bottom lip. Foggy shivers and is supremely annoyed about it.

“And are you satisfied?” he finds himself asking, voice pitched a little higher than he intends.

Elektra pulls her hand away from his face with a condescending pat to his cheek.

“I’m... Intrigued, I suppose,” she says. “You have very soft lips. I guess I can see why Matthew’s so enamored of you, although your technique leaves much to be desired.”

He doesn’t even have time to linger on the absolute insanity of Matt being ‘enamored of him’ because he’s so insulted about the rest of the sentence.

“My tech— Ok, no, that’s not—” he sputters. “I wasn’t even participating in that kiss, you do not get to judge my skill based on that!”

She quirks a dark, slender brow and asks,

“Oh, would you like a second chance at it?”

“No I would not!”

Finally, Elektra releases him, and Foggy sees shadows slinking to the ground out of the corner of his eye that correspond with the retreat of the semisolid not-hand steadying him from behind. She shakes her head and rolls her eyes.

“Of course. I forget what a jealous boy Matthew can be. And you’re a bit of a Boy Scout.”

Rude, but she’s got the right of it. Foggy’s just not the kind of person who could do this. He knows as well as Elektra does that Matt would be hurt and jealous that someone besides him was kissing her, and for it to be Foggy would—

“Really you should thank me, though. You’ll get the best sex out of him when he’s all possessive, it’s quite cute.”

Foggy’s brain flatlines.

“Matt and I aren’t—” He chokes on the words, face hot, and has to swallow a few times to get his voice back. “We don’t do that. We’re not...”

Elektra raises a skeptical brow. But after a couple seconds of studying his expression, she seems to believe it, and her other eyebrow lifts too.

“Goodness. He’s more of a martyr than I thought. Or just repressed.”

All of his experiences of her so far would lead him to believe that she’s mocking him over his feelings for the man who’s in love with her. But... That doesn’t feel like what’s happening. It’s as if she really thinks that Matt...

No. No, no, no. Foggy rejects that train of thought before it gains any more momentum. Elektra may sound serious, but she’s got to be fucking with him. She does. Because Matt isn’t... Matt doesn’t feel that way about Foggy. Even if, you know, maybe Foggy does feel that way about him. Getting his hopes up will just hurt worse in the end. It always has.

“I’m not talking about this,” he snaps, then bites his lip hard because while he doesn’t ascribe to the kinds of standards that say men shouldn’t cry, he is absolutely one hundred percent not gonna shed a single tear in front of the woman who’s basically his mortal enemy.

Not that his efforts to stay tough make much of a difference — Elektra rolls her eyes at him anyway, an irritated purse to her lips.

“There’s no need to be so touchy about it,” she murmurs at last. “We’re all adults here, Franklin.”

“If you were just going to be an asshole to me you could have shown up at Matt’s windowsill instead.”

“I already told you, if I wanted to see him I would have.”

“He’s pretty much your only tie to this place, though. So if it’s not to see Matt, what are you even doing back here?”

Elektra jerks back slightly at the question, though there isn’t anything as vulnerable as hurt on her face — just placid surprise.

“I’m cult-hunting,” she explains after a moment, running her thumb back and forth across her nails in what might be a nervous tic.

“The Hand?”

“Different cult.”

“How many evil cults do you know?” Foggy demands.

All he gets from Elektra is a shrug and an unconcerned,

“You’d be surprised how many one comes across in my line of work.”

There’s not a single implication in that sentence that Foggy would touch with a ten-foot pole, to be perfectly honest. So he just doesn’t ask. When no response is forthcoming, Elektra stands — rises, is maybe a better word because she moves like a fucking panther, all deadly grace like Matt is when he’s high on adrenaline and in his element under that stupid mask of his — and makes her way over to his kitchen, where she proceeds to rifle through the cabinets.

Foggy’s niggling worries about large kitchen knives and how someone like Elektra might make use of them return, but he staves them off in the same thoroughly uncomforting way as before: by reminding himself she could just as easily kill him barehanded.

“Goodness, Franklin, I know you’re back to slumming it but this is abysmal. We’re going to need to do some grocery shopping,” she calls over her shoulder.

“You are _not_ staying here,” he tells her, leaving no room for argument.

Elektra makes a skeptical noise, still rummaging through his kitchen cabinets like she’s got any right to. Foggy would like to forcibly march her out his door, but for one thing it’s still raining and he’s not sure she actually has anywhere to go — or, rather, that she’ll go there, because he’s a hundred percent certain she can shell out for a hotel if she wants — and for another thing he probably couldn’t physically remove her from the premises even if he tried because she’s some sort of immortal superhuman now.

_Why exactly is it that all the assholes get the superpowers_ , he wonders. An answer is not forthcoming.

Meanwhile, Elektra has moved on to the fridge. She’s got a bottle of expensive red wine he’s pretty sure Marci gave him for Christmas last year clutched in one too-pale hand, and the other is sliding a package of steak out of his freezer. He really, really hopes she’s not about to tear it out of the package and eat it raw, but he also has no idea what undead supernatural ninja warriors typically eat. Foggy’s probably lucky she didn’t tear him open and eat him raw, since she’s some kind of demon zombie now. The thought makes him queasy, and he slumps back against the couch a little.

“Franklin.”

There’s a light pat at his cheek. Elektra is still halfway across the apartment, opening the wine with a corkscrew. His eyes refocus on a tendril of shadow swaying near his own face. It reaches out to smack him again, and when he tries to brush it away it goes intangible and shrinks back into the floor.

“What?” he mutters, scrubbing a hand over his eyes.

Elektra gestures at the steak with an expectant look on her face. Ah, yes, Foggy thinks. God forbid Miss Natchios prepare her own food. He gets up and cooks it anyway — steak at three in the morning for a pampered supernatural femme fatale — because this is just the kind of bizarre his life has become and there’s no point wasting energy to try and fight it.

She likes her steak much more rare than he does, but Foggy’s not sure if that’s an undead super ninja thing or a rich person thing or what. Her table manners are precise and elegant, but her appetite is more than a bit intimidating; she polishes off the entire cut of meat and half the bottle of wine but doesn’t look remotely overfull or drunk. Unfortunately, this apparent lack of intoxication doesn’t keep her from being chatty the way a bite of steak did.

“Now I’m curious,” she begins after licking the juices off her steak knife in pretty much the most serial-killer-esque fashion Foggy can imagine. “Does Matthew get the full housewife treatment too, when he comes to see you after sundown?”

Foggy doesn’t have a good way to respond to that. First off, he doesn’t want to step in whatever dismissing-traditionally-feminine-work-as-unimportant internalized misogyny Elektra may or may not have going on. Second, it would be dumb to point out that if he was anything close to her wife, he would enjoy cooking for her instead of being coerced into it by her imperious attitude and also her demon powers.

_Tread lightly, Nelson_ , he tells himself.

“Sometimes I order him takeout, if he’s been especially stupid and skipped dinner,” Foggy cops to in the end. “But no, I’m not in the habit of cooking full meals at three in the morning.”

“Well, don’t I feel special.”

Elektra smiles with too many teeth again. It’s still creepy as all hell, but Foggy’s kind of becoming desensitized by now. She hasn’t murdered him in cold blood yet, so it’s pretty likely she won’t. Which is great, because Matt would guilt himself into an early grave if she did.

“Special is one way to put it, I guess,” Foggy mutters.

They lapse into silence. Elektra fiddles with the knife, watching the blade with dark and luminous eyes as she twirls it between her fingers.

“You were right,” she says at last.

Foggy blinks.

“About _what_?”

“Matthew _is_ my only tie to this city. It would make sense for me to go to him rather than you, despite my curiosity. But if I went to him, I think he would try to slot me into his quaint little hypocritical idea of what goodness is again. I’m done making apologies for who and what I am,” Elektra says loftily, and she sounds exactly like Matt. “I’m done letting other people tell me what’s right and wrong. I can make that determination myself.”

“Everything I know about your moral compass tells me you can’t,” argues Foggy.

Elektra glares at him, her dark eyes flashing.

“Choosing wrong on purpose, or not even caring about the distinction, is different than not knowing, Franklin.”

Foggy’s mouth maybe… Gets away from him a little.

“So you actively chose to do the wrong thing. Wow, that makes me feel so much better.”

Elektra blinks. And then a rude grin curls her mouth.

“Why, Franklin,” she purrs, “that was downright sanctimonious. Taking lessons from Matthew, are we?”

As if that’s the only logical reason. Please. Foggy gets to be petty and judgmental all on his own. He’s had to put up with enough weird bullshit that people should expect it at this point.

“I don’t need Matt’s help being pissed that you firebombed my life. Twice.”

Elektra offers him a shark’s smile.

“Touché.”

For a minute, two, they sit in silence. Foggy still doesn’t know how to politely tell her to go away, especially after the bizarre vulnerability he’s seen out of her tonight. He clears his throat.

“What’s your, uh, headway with this not-the-Hand evil cult?” he asks her.

“So far, not a sign of my prey – so afraid of the big bad Black Sky,” she muses.

“What exactly is a Black Sky, anyway?”

It’s an exasperated question, about yet another baffling title that’s been dropped into his life, but he’s not really expecting an answer. When is one ever forthcoming in regards to all the mythical bullshit that’s become the background radiation of his life? He still has no clue what an Iron Fist is, except that Danny glows sometimes. Matt refuses to elaborate on who exactly the Chaste are, if he even knows himself. The thing is, Foggy knows all the words, but the meanings? A complete mystery.

And yet, Elektra doesn’t immediately dismiss the question. She sighs, fiddles with her empty wine glass, and finally turns that dark, piercing gaze on him again.

“The Black Sky is meant to be a vessel for the being the Hand worships,” she explains. “The thing which gives them their power and taught them to make the potion of immortality. Their texts just call it the Beast.”

“A vessel,” repeats Foggy. “For the Beast. And is that why all the…” He wiggles his fingers at the unnatural, shifting shadows. “That’s him? It?”

He should probably be more terrified that Elektra’s sharing her body with a demon.

“No. The powers are his, but I’m in control. How those powers are used… I decide. No one else. I am the Black Sky,” Elektra says. “But I am also Elektra Natchios. And I will never let anyone take that from me again.”

Elektra’s expression is fierce and there’s an unearthly power shining behind her dark eyes, but Foggy doesn’t find himself afraid. He’s actually a little impressed, if he’s being honest with himself.

With that in mind, he does capitulate. Just a little.

“Well, I’m going back to bed,” Foggy says. “You can stay the night. Just the night. And don’t… Kill anything in my apartment.”

Elektra rolls her eyes, but there’s a challenging, interested spark to them, replacing the more serious expression from before.

“Dibs on the bed.”

* * *

Elektra does not get the bed. Foggy draws the line at giving up his place of rest. No matter how civil Elektra’s being, or how much of an understanding they’ve come to tonight, a guy still has limits. She is still his nemesis. Not to mention, of the two of them he’s the one with an actual full-time job he needs to be awake for in the morning. He needs his rest.

Elektra gets the couch.

“How ungentlemanly,” she complains, to no sympathy.

“Tell it to the judge, princess.”

Foggy is at least nice enough to help her make up the couch. He gives himself credit for that.

As he heads back to his bedroom, Foggy flicks off the lights one by one. Even in the dark he can still feel that Elektra’s in the apartment, though. Sense her, somehow, like a chill up his spine. Possibly due to the demon powers, possibly because she’s just as deadly without them. Settling under the covers, Foggy tries not to think any more about it.

“Goodnight, Elektra.”

There’s a sigh from the living room, but it sounds almost amused. She’s probably rolling her eyes at him.

“Goodnight, Franklin.”

_Victory_ , he thinks, snuggling into his pillow and letting his eyes slip shut.

* * *

She’s gone in the morning, no sign of her left but dirty dishes on the kitchen counter and the clothes she borrowed crisply folded on his coffee table. But Foggy has a feeling she’ll be back. In fact, he’s almost certain of it.

What he’s not certain of is how he feels about it.


End file.
